Why Replace Proprietary BIOS and UEFI with the Fully Free GNU Boot Firmware
The Free Software Foundation took the GNU Boot project under its wing in September 2026, providing both financial backing and legal support for the effort to create a fully free firmware replacement for conventional BIOS and UEFI.
When a computer powers on, the motherboard firmware is the first code to execute. It initializes memory, the CPU, controllers, and the video adapter before handing control to the bootloader. Almost all current implementations are distributed only as closed binaries, making inspection or modification difficult and often blocked by hardware or cryptographic protections.
Security and Freedom Concerns with Closed Firmware
Modern Intel and AMD processors contain autonomous subsystems—Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor—that start before the main operating system. These components have full access to system memory and sometimes network interfaces, yet their code remains entirely proprietary. Users must trust vendors regarding the absence of vulnerabilities or intentional backdoors.
Additional problems include manufacturer-imposed Wi-Fi whitelist restrictions, blocked boot-device selection, and automatic firmware updates that cannot be rolled back. These behaviors have been documented on devices from several vendors, notably HP.
What GNU Boot Provides
GNU Boot is a ready-to-flash firmware image built exclusively from free software components. The hardware-initialization layer is supplied by coreboot, while the bootloader is typically GRUB or SeaBIOS. The project was founded in 2022 by Denis Karikli and Adrien Bourma after a community split from Libreboot, which began accepting binary blobs to increase hardware compatibility. GNU Boot follows strict GNU criteria that forbid any non-free code or build tools.
Comparison with Related Projects
coreboot offers broad device support but often requires closed blobs for video initialization or Management Engine components on many platforms. Libreboot supplies pre-built images and simpler installation procedures yet permits proprietary modules for wider hardware coverage. GNU Boot rejects such compromises, resulting in a narrower but fully free set of supported systems.
Currently Supported Hardware
- ThinkPad X200, X200s, X200 Tablet, T400, T500, X60 series
- Early Apple models: MacBook 1.1, 2.1 and iMac 5,2
- AMD Family 15h boards such as KGPE-D16 and KCMA-D8
- Selected desktop boards including GA-G41M-ES2L and D945GCLF
- Limited experimental server configurations
Newer platforms after 2013–2014 are generally unsupported because Intel Boot Guard and equivalent AMD mechanisms verify firmware signatures before execution, and open-source memory initialization code does not exist for recent chipsets.
While widespread adoption of fully free firmware remains distant, initiatives such as Google’s use of coreboot in Chromebooks and offerings from certain Linux-focused laptop vendors demonstrate growing interest. If demand increases, manufacturers may begin designing boards with open firmware in mind.
Related articles
Personal Data in Russian Franchise Networks: Who Qualifies as Data Operator Under 152-FZ
In typical franchise models, customer personal data is collected at franchisee points, stored in the franchisor’s central system, and used for network-wide loyalty programs and marketing. The key legal question is which party determines the purposes of processing and therefore bears operator status under Federal Law No. 152-FZ. The law defines an operator as the entity that independently or jointly sets processing purposes, data composition, and actions, regardless of contractual labels. Franchisees usually act as operators when concluding contracts with customers, while franchisors become processors unless they pursue independent goals such as running loyalty schemes or sending branded advertising. When a franchisor defines its own purposes, both parties may simultaneously qualify as operators for different processing objectives, requiring separate legal bases and documentation. Proper data-processing instructions must be embedded in the commercial concession agreement and must list specific data categories, actions, security measures, and breach-notification timelines to avoid administrative fines ranging from 150,000 to 500,000 RUB.
Dynamic Sites on Yandex Cloud Storage Enable Communication Under White-List Restrictions
A developer facing mobile internet white lists explored ways to exchange encrypted messages without relying on blocked infrastructure. Initial attempts with a national messenger bot failed due to poor API documentation and account hijacking. The team then modeled the problem as three neighboring plots where Alice and Bob route messages through Eve while a slow postman handles delivery. Yandex Disk was tested as a message store accessible via direct GET and POST requests, though it required accounts and suffered from 15-25 second latency. The final approach used Yandex Cloud object storage, whose domains remained whitelisted, allowing HTML files to load and function even when only government services and select platforms were reachable.
Rawline Aggregates VK, MAX, DNS and Other Tunnels into One Multi-Platform VPN Client
Rawline is a new multi-platform client that combines various VPN protocols and non-standard transports into a single application for Android, Windows, Linux and macOS. The project is built on Throne using sing-box and Xray network cores and supports both conventional protocols and unusual transports such as VK and MAX calls, WebRTC, DNS and S3. Users can import profiles via links or QR codes, test latency, chain connections and apply per-app or per-domain routing rules. The developer paid special attention to security issues, removing unnecessary local proxy endpoints, protecting internal connections with random passwords and adding traffic ownership verification that is enabled by default on Android 10 and newer. Additional fixes were implemented after discovering that some transport bridges could be hijacked by external applications sending the first UDP packet. Source code and builds are available on GitHub.
Russia Freezes Entire Hosting Networks to Block VPN Traffic, Investigation Finds
An independent test of 435 endpoints across 154 hosting providers revealed that Russian internet providers are throttling connections to entire autonomous systems rather than individual IP addresses. Networks belonging to Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, M247 and HostPapa are frozen after roughly 25 TCP packets, causing downloads to stall at around 16 KB while UDP-based WireGuard tunnels remain unaffected. The blocking is applied uniformly by multiple Russian operators including Beeline, MTS and home broadband providers, indicating a centrally distributed rule from Roskomnadzor via the TSPU filtering system. Smaller providers that rent IP space from the affected autonomous systems are also impacted, regardless of their own brand or location. Cloudflare-hosted resources currently pass the test, but the list of blocked networks has remained stable since mid-2025. The researcher published an open-source script that allows anyone to reproduce the measurements in under a minute.